Starbucks is taking advantage of their relationship with AT&T to help bump up sales at U.S. Starbucks locations. The company has begun a program where it will be offering complimentary access to the AT&T WiFi in its stores. Previously, the wi-fi was only available for a charge or if you were already a AT&T WiFi or broadband subscriber.

Now you will be able to gain up to two hours free per day at Starbucks locations simply by doing something you may already be doing. You will need to have a Starbuck card that you have used in the last 30 days. You also must also agree to receive up to four emails per month from AT&T. To utilize your Starbucks card you simply need to purchase an item with your Starbuck card or load a balance once every 30 days.

To sign-up for the offer you simply need to register your Starbucks card and create your AT&T account. You will then use your AT&T account to sign-in for your free two hours of WiFi access. The two hours of WiFi is only available during one session which means you won’t be able to only use an hour and come back later for an additional hour. The good news is that Starbucks is working on giving customers the ability to be able to use their two hours of access across multiple sessions per day.

This a fabulous idea that Starbucks and AT&T have come up with. This will no doubt generate more traffic for Starbucks locations and more traffic means additional sales. I can tell you that it encourages me to go into Starbucks at least once a month to purchase a drink or to load up my Starbucks card and heck, I’m not a really big coffee drinker.

Most Starbucks locations a perfectly suited to go grab a drink, sit down and browse the Internet or do some work for a couple of hours. I imagine that many college students will be big fans of this latest offer by Starbucks. It may be a safe bet to assume that I’ll see a lot more students at my friendly neighborhood Starbucks from now on.

It’s ideas like this that Starbucks really needs to increase sales. People are feeling the pain of rising gas prices and some people are combating the problem by cutting out some expenses during their day. It’s kind of a no brainer to cut down on the $3 cups of coffee when you are feeling the pain at the pump.